Police battling spike in A/C theft

A man and a woman were sitting outside an East Athens home last Monday, dismantling an air conditioner, when they caught the attention of a passing police officer.

He stopped to chat, and snapped a few photographs of the air conditioners.

But he didn’t buy the pair’s story one bit — that they collected units that were put at the curb for the garbage man to pick up — especially not when A/C units are disappearing from homes and businesses almost every day.

The photos the officer took, along with information about the man and woman he jotted down, could come in handy down the road in building a case that police can bring to court, according to Athens-Clarke police Sgt. Randy Garrett.

While plainclothes officers stake out neighborhoods where metal thieves have hit, patrol officers are tasked to keep an eye out for signs of copper theft and get more aggressive in figuring out who’s taking the metal.

“We’re asking all of our uniformed officers to get out and talk with people when they see them with copper and scrap metal,” Athens-Clarke police Sgt. Randy Garrett said.

“If they see a truck or trailer loaded with scrap, we’re asking the officers to check if the loads are secure, if the tail lights are working — any probable cause for them to stop these vehicles so we can at least get an ID” of the driver, the officer said.

Police brass earlier this year assigned Garrett to devise tactics to combat the scourge of metal theft, which has soared as metal prices climbed to record prices.

Salvage yards paid about $1.25 per pound for copper two years ago, but the price has since nearly tripled.

Drug addicts in particular have found a quick and easy money-maker — a crime that’s relatively hard for police to solve unless the thief is caught in the act.

Once an air conditioner is broken down, or the insulation is stripped off wiring, there are no identifying marks that can trace the metal parts back to an owner, police said.

Some thieves are so desperate they don’t even use special tools to remove copper components from air-conditioning units, said Wes Wilson of Park Properties, which owns 30 rental homes in the North Place neighborhood off Commerce Road that was hard-hit by copper thieves.

They just use hammers to beat $40 to $60 worth of copper out of them, Wilson said.

Garrett has met with landlords and property owners to discuss theft-prevention measures like installing outdoor lighting and trimming bushes around air conditioners so thieves don’t have as much camouflage, he said.

He’s also noticed that more property owners now are enclosing outdoor air-conditioning units in cages.

“People should try anything to make it harder and more time-consuming, so it’s not just a matter of cutting some wires and throwing the air conditioner into a truck,” Garrett said.

Area recyclers also are helping, by photographing each person who trades scrap metal for cash, and sometimes delaying payments to people, holding on to suspicious items until police can check them out.

But thieves easily can sidestep such safeguards.

Two weeks ago, officers investigated the theft of copper wiring from the ceiling of a small repair shop off Harve Mathis Road, then found a pile of scrap metal behind a trailer nearby, police said.

A slow-witted man who lived there admitted he stole some of the metal, but said he was coerced by a drug addict who lives nearby, according to police; when he and the other man stole the wiring, his job was to strip the insulation off so when they went to the scrap yard it was just plain copper wire with nothing to identify it.

The man told an officer the addict also “intimidated” him into going to a Madison County scrap yard where the man used his own photo ID to cash in scrap metal, police said.

Athens-Clarke police — stretched thin as they investigate burglaries and other types of property crimes — could use help in battling metal theft and hope people will immediately call 911 when they see suspicious activity, Garrett said.

That’s what happened last Monday night, when a man reported he saw a known thief drive a pickup truck onto the property of a former warehouse on South Milledge Avenue.

Officers found Joshua Micah Hembree’s truck filled with metal items, but the only thing they could charge him with at the time was loitering and prowling because they couldn’t immediately disprove his story that he found the large plates, bolts and other metal items in a Dumpster along Atlanta Highway.

Police seized the truck, and a couple of days later, they determined the metal — valued at more than $3,000 — had been stolen from a job site on Will Hunter Road where workers are building a new sewage treatment plant, police said.

The 25-year-old Athens man was charged with felony theft by taking.

The arrest never would have happened if the alert resident hadn’t called police.

“Metal theft is a real hot issue right now,” Garrett said. “We’re staying on it and trying to attack it in every way we can, but we could also use the help of citizens.

“If we can get good witnesses, hopefully we’ll end up with some good prosecutions,” he said.

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